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Santurri critiques 'Lincoln' in Star Tribune

By Kari VanDerVeenNovember 26, 2012

St. Olaf College Professor of Religion and Philosophy Edmund Santurri argues in a Star Tribune commentary that while Steven Spielberg's film Lincoln is a cinematic masterpiece, it misses the mark on an important historical matter: Abraham Lincoln's religion.

"The film never brings home just how intimately Lincoln's moral convictions about slavery and his political convictions about the character and course of the Civil War were tied to his religious sensibilities," Santurri writes.

He notes that for Lincoln, "emancipation became a providentially ordained project that turned a just war into a holy war."

Santurri, who also serves as director of the Ethical Issues and Normative Perspectives Program at St. Olaf, has taught a seminar titled The Religious Sensibility of Abraham Lincoln.